Cloud Migration Checklist: 15 Steps to a Safer Lift and Shift and Beyond

Purpose This checklist helps engineering and migration teams plan and execute cloud migrations with minimal disruption. Whether you are doing a lift and shift or a phased re architecture, follow these practical steps to reduce risk and ensure a repeatable process.

Migration is a series of small, verifiable moves rather than one big leap.

1. Define objectives Clarify business goals such as cost savings, scalability, or geographic expansion.
2. Inventory applications Catalog all apps, dependencies, data stores, and third party integrations.
3. Assess suitability Classify apps by complexity and cloud readiness: rehost, replatform, refactor.
4. Set success criteria Define performance, availability, and cost targets for each migration wave.
5. Security and compliance mapping Map regulatory requirements and data residency constraints.
6. Proof of concept Run a pilot migration with a non critical app to validate assumptions.
7. Data migration strategy Choose online replication for low downtime or bulk transfer for noncritical data.
8. Network planning Design network topology, peering, and bandwidth requirements.
9. Observability and testing Instrument applications for metrics and tracing before migration to compare baselines.
10. Rollback and cutover plan Prepare stepwise cutovers with clear rollback criteria.
11. Cost modeling Estimate run costs and account for transitional dual running.
12. Team readiness Train ops and dev teams on cloud primitives and runbooks.
13. Automation Use IaC to codify environments and deployment processes.
14. Post migration validation Conduct load tests and verify monitoring and backup restores.
15. Optimization phase After stabilization, apply rightsizing, storage tiering, and managed services migration.

Following these steps reduces migration surprises and ensures each wave delivers demonstrable value. Keep stakeholders aligned with frequent demos and progress reports.